Friday, April 4, 2014

Artist Olafur Eliasson has developed a free app called "Your exhibition guide" to accompany the exhibition "The Infinite White Abyss" focusing on the complex subject of the white surface in the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian.

If, like me, you are not steeped in art history, or expecting to be in Dusseldorf anytime soon, you could skip directly to downloading the app (on iOS or Android) or checking out the "Welcome" video by Olafur Eliasson (at the top of this post or here on YouTube.)

The app itself is a series of short "exercises" that gets you to think about experiencing an art exhibition (and art museums!) in different ways. Eliasson asks you to consider such approaches as "non-art", "abstraction" and even experiencing your visit as an asteroid, among other possibilities. Inside the app, under each video, are additional thoughts and references related to each of the experiential exercises.

The cool, and inspiring, thing to me about what Olafur Eliasson has done here is to create a toolbox for anyone, inside any art museum, to be rewarded for careful observation. In fact, I'd go as far to say that these exercises could be used outside of art museums as well.

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